Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 1-6

by Paul Hutchens

  Be present at our table, Lord,

  Be here and everywhere adored;

  These mercies bless, and grant that we

  May feast in paradise with Thee.

  It was the first time I’d ever thought about there being something good to eat when we got to heaven, and I thought it was a good idea because I was terribly hungry right that minute. So also was Poetry, who was always hungry anyway, and so also was Dragonfly, who had digested only one meal that day.

  In a few seconds, there was a scraping of about one thousand chairs as one thousand people in that great big dining room sat down and waited to be served. Again I was glad I knew my manners and not only knew them but had had sense enough to practice them at home so I didn’t look awkward in a public place like that.

  But pretty soon supper was over, and the one thousand people started getting up from the different tables and going out. Upstairs, in what was called the lobby, we met a lot of different people, such as the president of the school, and the dean of men, and the director of the radio department where Circus was going to sing, and where in a few minutes he was going to practice.

  Rooms, rooms, rooms, people, people, people, and nearly everybody was carrying a Bible under his arm or in his hand, just the way children carry their schoolbooks. I reached into my vest pocket and took out my own little thin New Testament and carried it out where people could see that I wasn’t ashamed of it.

  Then we went to the administration building and into an elevator. All of us crowded in with Barry and Santa Claus—Mr. Farmer—all of us taking off our different kinds of hats or caps, whichever we’d worn, because there was a lady on the elevator too.

  Up, up we went, stopping at every floor to see if there was anybody else who wanted to get on. But soon we were away up in a little room in the radio tower, and Circus and Little Jim were ready to practice.

  The piano was what is called a baby grand, and it surely looked nice. The round microphone, which stood on a long brasslike stem, looked kind of like a small steering wheel on a car. Circus had learned his song by heart, and so had Little Jim, which is the way to make a song sound better when you’re singing it, and so that, if people are watching you sing, you can look them right in the eyes and make them listen better.

  None of us knew, of course, that Santa—Mr. Farmer—had a surprise planned for us that night in his apartment. But that comes later.

  Moody Bible Institute, we found out, is not only the largest Bible institute in the world, but their radio is dedicated, as Old Man Paddler will be very glad to know, “wholly to the service of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

  Before we left there that night to go to the mission, they handed us some literature telling about the school, which I sent home to my mom and dad, and Poetry sent home to his parents.

  I could just see my mom and dad sitting at our kitchen table, with Charlotte Ann in her high chair beside them, and nobody sitting at my place. I’ll bet they’d have my chair there, though, and maybe my plate and my favorite blue mug out of which I drank milk three times a day.

  And Dad would open my letter from Chicago and read it, and then he’d say, “Wow! Look at this about the Moody Bible Institute! It says there are thousands of people who study the Bible by mail from there!”

  Then my mom might lean over, and they’d read it together, with his bushy red hair and her brownish-gray hair brushing against each other. And they’d read about the teachers, and the more than one thousand students, and the library, and the evening school, and the magazine, and the school’s radio station, and all the former students who have gone to be missionaries in countries around the world.

  My parents would also be glad to know that Little Jim had already made up his mind he wanted to go to school there sometime.

  As soon as Little Jim and Circus finished practicing, we all went over to what was called the “153 Building” and up to a room called “Mr. Moody’s Room,” where they had different things about Dwight L. Moody’s life—the man who started the school in the first place. There were a lot of things to see, such as a chair they wouldn’t let anybody sit in, because it was Mr. Moody’s old chair.

  To me the most interesting thing was a picture of a gang of fourteen ragged-looking boys who belonged to Mr. Moody’s first Sunday school many years ago. They were sitting or half sitting or standing, and one of them had a worn-out broom in front of him.

  “What crazy names,” Poetry said, reading some of them out loud.

  Each boy’s strange name was printed right below his picture. I listened to Poetry’s squawky voice calling off the ridiculous names, and this is what some of them were: “Red Eye, Smikes, Butcher, Rag Breeches …” Rag Breeches was the one who had the broom.

  Right above the gang of boys was printed “BEFORE,” which means the way the boys looked when Mr. Moody got them to start to Sunday school.

  Then, right beside that picture was another picture of the same gang of boys, and they had their hair combed and had on new suits, which some rich Christian in Chicago had paid for. The boys earned the suits by going to Sunday school quite a while. There was certainly a difference in the looks of the two pictures.

  All of a sudden, Little Tom Till, who was standing at my right elbow, piped up and said, “What happened to the other two?”

  “What other two?” I said, and then I looked, and sure enough he was right. On the first picture, the one called “BEFORE,” there were fourteen boys. On the picture entitled “AFTER,” there were only twelve.

  “Maybe they stopped going to Sunday school,” Little Jim said.

  And my mind went off wondering what became of those two extra boys, and what kind of parents they had. I hoped none of our gang would ever stop going to Sunday school and drop out of the picture.

  Soon after that we were on a bus going to the mission. Circus and I sat together. The rest of us were on one side or the other. A lot of different-looking people were all around and in front of us and behind us, and I thought that if anybody wanted to be a missionary and for some reason didn’t get to go to a foreign country, he could be one right in Chicago.

  All of a sudden, Little Jim got up out of his seat and balanced himself, holding onto the seat tops. Then he staggered forward two or three seats and handed a piece of paper to a little boy who was sitting there beside his mom. I knew it was a gospel tract.

  Little Jim acted very bashful while he slipped back to his seat beside Santa Claus, he being the only one of us who could actually sit beside him without having to put a foot out into the aisle to keep from falling off. Well, now, maybe that statement was what is called exaggeration, but Santa, or Mr. Farmer, is a very big man, anyway.

  At last there we were, just about two blocks, which we would have to walk, from the mission. I guess I never saw so many people in my life who looked like they were prodigal sons and who ought to go back home and get cleaned up, as well as confess their sins and get their souls washed.

  We walked along the way people do in cities, everybody walking very fast and in a terrible hurry to get somewhere from somewhere—not at all like people do in Sugar Creek, who know they are alive and that the world isn’t going to fall to pieces tomorrow.

  Down those two blocks, all along the sidewalk, were some filthy-looking theaters and old saloons. And everywhere were electric signs doing all kinds of things, whirling in circles, jabbing back and forth like arrows, zigzagging like a football player dodging through a crowd of other players, blinking on and off and on and off without ever stopping. Most of the signs advertised beer or liquor or cheap rooms.

  And then we were there, getting a drink out of a bubbling little water fountain just outside the mission door.

  In the window of the mission, which was like a big long store building, was a sign asking, “How Long Since You Wrote to Mother?” There was also a big Bible, wide open, with a verse marked for people to read.

  Poetry was already reading the verse out loud in his squawky voice, which was half boy’s voice a
nd half man’s. It was the verse that begins, “I will get up and go to my father, and will say unto him, ‘Father, I have sinned …’”

  Just inside the door, a smiling man handed us a hymnbook, which was the same kind we used in our church at home. Then the superintendent, a tall, smiling, big-voiced man, led us all the way up the long aisle to the front, up the platform stairs, which looked freshly polished, and across the platform, on each side of which was a big grand piano. He took us into an office in the back where there was a man at a desk. We left our different kinds of caps there.

  Santa had us all sit down in the office. He was going to preach at the mission that night, and some of the men of his church were going to give their testimonies, his church being the kind of a church that was alive enough to have what is called a gospel team, like the one our church has at Sugar Creek and which my dad is the leader of.

  There was a prayer meeting in the office before we began the mission meeting itself, and all of us got down on our knees with the superintendent and Barry and Santa.

  Then, up we got and out we went, and pretty soon we were sitting on the platform between the two big pianos. I wished Little Jim could have played one of them, but they already had a man sitting on each piano bench, and I knew Little Jim would have to wait until Circus’s solo before he would get to play.

  It would take too long to tell every interesting thing that happened, so I’ll skip some of it. But, of course, I felt proud of Little Jim while he played the piano for Circus’s song.

  Circus’s voice sounded even sweeter than when he was singing from a treetop along Sugar Creek. It was really wonderful. His brown hair glistened under the big electric light above his head, and the people out in the long audience acted as though they couldn’t move and didn’t want to anyway.

  I always liked to sit on a platform and look out at all the different people’s different kinds of faces, the way I do at a big herd of cattle in a field, which stand still and look at you if you happen to have on a red sweater.

  I never will forget what the superintendent said when Circus finished. He stood there very straight for a bit after Circus had sat down, and then he said to the people, “It’s unusual to see a fine boy like this using his voice for the Lord, instead of singing the music of the world.”

  He turned to Circus and made him stand beside him. Then he put his arm halfway around him the way my dad does me when he likes me or is proud of me for something, and he said to the people, “How many of you will promise to pray for this young man, that God will make him a mighty power in the world for winning souls?”

  I looked at Circus through the superintendent’s eyes, and he actually looked like a young man. Then I looked at myself through my own eyes, and I didn’t look like very much—only a redheaded kid with too many freckles, and I wasn’t growing fast enough.

  Well, in answer to the superintendent’s question, I saw nearly every hand in the crowd go up—the hands of the nice-looking people who were there to visit the mission, and even some of the dirty, wrinkled-up hands of some of the drunks and of the other men. Some men had been half asleep, and some had just been hushed up for talking out loud in church.

  Pacific Garden Mission had what was called a “formal service,” but the people acted like a great big family, and sometimes they were even noisy. Still, it seemed all the Christian people there loved God with all their hearts. Over on the right side of the room and about halfway back sat three rows of young people who had come from some church in Chicago to visit and to give their testimonies when it was time for them to do it.

  Then, all of a sudden, right in the middle of the testimony meeting, a man stood up right under the big picture of Billy Sunday, which was hanging on the wall over the heads of the young people. With a loud, gruff, and very husky voice he started to tell everybody what a terrible drunk he had once been. He had tried to quit drinking for many years and couldn’t. “And then, one night,” he said, “when I was about to kill myself and was staggering around on the street, I heard music, which was coming right through that door there and …”

  Talk about being glad he was saved! That man certainly sounded like it. In fact, he waved his arms and walked out into the aisle. He reminded me of a man in a prizefight. He had a crooked nose that was also flat, and, in fact, I learned he had been a prizefighter once.

  The next man who talked looked like a very important businessman, with pretty white hair and a good shave. He talked quietly and very kindly.

  It was when they were taking the collection, or rather when we were that we saw Bob Till come in at the door and sit down on a back seat. I say “we” were taking the offering, because the superintendent asked two of the Sugar Creek Gang to do it. He looked around at us, who were sitting behind him, and picked out Big Jim and me and handed us the offering plates, which looked like two of my mom’s new, bright tin baking pans.

  I’d never helped take an offering before, so I felt a little embarrassed at first but proud too. We started at the front and were working our way to the rear—most people not giving anything because many of them didn’t have anything to give; some had just come in so they could have a place to sleep that night.

  I didn’t have more than seventy-five cents in my offering pan—and I was almost to the back of the room—when all of a sudden I looked, and there was a ten-dollar bill in it, which a drunken man had dropped in. Most drunken men are nearly always glad to give their money away or else drink it up or buy drinks for anybody else who wants them.

  And right that minute the door opened, and Bob Till staggered in. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and yet there he was, slithering into a seat in a corner right in front of me. I was still taking the offering and was facing the door, so I could see him. He sort of melted down into his seat and ducked his head.

  8

  You could have knocked me over with an exclamation point, I was so surprised to see him there. I leaned over and whispered, “Hi, Bob!”

  Bob Till’s head shot up.

  The two pianos on the platform were playing a duet, with somebody accompanying them on a violin, so nobody but us could hear what we said to each other.

  And I guess you could have knocked him over with a comma or maybe a period. He turned white. He stared at me and then at the money in the offering plate, looking as if he had seen a red-haired, freckle-faced ghost. He didn’t actually look very much like himself, though. His face was dirty, and his hair was combed on a different side and at the same time looked messed up the way mine does when I’ve been standing on my head in our front yard at home.

  “Shh!” Bob said. “Don’t tell anybody who I am. The police …” He slid down farther into his seat, grabbed a songbook, and buried his face in it.

  And for some reason I began to feel very sorry for Big Bob Till. Anyway, I was sorry for his brother, Tom, so I kept still.

  Big Jim hadn’t even noticed him, so we walked back up to the platform with our offering plates and sat down again and watched the meeting. The more I looked back to the row where Bob Till was, the more I realized that he didn’t look like himself at all. Maybe I was the only one of the gang who would recognize him, I thought.

  But just that minute, I felt Poetry nudge me in the side, and he said, “Look who’s in the back row!”

  “Shh!” I said and glanced out the corner of my eye at Little Tom. I really didn’t know what to do. I wondered why Bob was staying in the meeting when he knew we were there.

  Poetry whispered to me again. “I’ll bet he doesn’t know we know about the stolen money from Mr. Simondson’s grocery, or he’d beat it out into the street and hide somewhere.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. Of course, he didn’t know, I thought, so I kept on keeping still, and the meeting went on to its close.

  Well, I’d seen people take their suitcases into railroad depots or into hotels and check them and get a little round card called a “check” with a number on it, then come back later and hand the card to the baggage man and g
et back the suitcases. But I’d never heard of a man taking himself to a mission and checking himself in, but that’s exactly what happened.

  Pretty soon there began a slow parade of sad-faced men walking past us to the platform. Each one took a little round check with a number on it and crossed the platform to the stair door.

  Such men I’d never seen before or even read about. I mean such unhappy men. It really was a terrible sight to see—all kinds of men with all kinds of shaped heads and different-length, different-colored hair, all of it needing to be washed and also their faces.

  They all had different kinds of eyes too. Some were bleary, some were just sad, and there wasn’t a one that had a twinkle in it. Some of the men looked very fierce. Some were slouched over and acted as though they wished they weren’t alive—which Dad says is the way anybody feels who doesn’t have any hope. Only a few of them looked as if they were actually alive in their souls.

  Thinking about that made me wonder why anybody ever wanted to hire out to the devil in the first place, if that was the kind of wages he paid all his hired men.

  And then I saw Bob Till coming. He had his hair pulled down over his eyes and his shirt collar turned up about his neck. His head was down. He glanced at Big Jim, and at the same time, I looked down and saw Bob’s fists double up, and I knew he hated Big Jim.

  I looked quick at the rest of our gang, and Poetry was the only one who had recognized Bob. Even Tom didn’t know him.

  Then Bob had his check and was up on the platform, following the others. I watched until he was gone upstairs. I looked around, and none of the gang looked as if they’d seen anybody they knew.

  About six minutes later, we were allowed to go upstairs to watch the men go to bed. Barry and Mr. Farmer—Santa—went up with us and also one of the workers of the mission. It was not only interesting to see, but it was absolutely the unhappiest thing I ever saw. Not a man was smiling, and nobody acted glad he was alive.